Trumpeter, music educator, author, and now funny-man Ron Modell talks about his good friend Quincy Jones as well as working with the likes of Phil Collins and countless other big names, plus his book, his advocacy for music education, doing stand-up comedy, plus advice for aspiring musicians.
“My (students), for some reason, always were eager, enthusiastic, excited, so that every time Quincy (Jones) came in to rehearse – and our rehearsal schedule was Tuesday six hours, Wednesday seven hours, Thursday nine hours, and on the day of the performance the students were on-stage from 10:30 in the morning ‘til 1am, with just one break for dinner – so it was a matter of everything coming together.”
“It was sometimes very difficult, for instance, playing a Mozart symphony sitting on the stage in your white tie and tails, and there’s absolute silence in the audience during the slow movement and you just had this desire to scream all of a sudden and upset everything.”
“My friend, Michael Hirsh, who’s a recognized author, said to me ‘it’s really hard to write a book.’ And I had never really thought about that. But, it actually took six years.”
“When I look back on it, my gosh, the things that I’ve said and done, the places that I’ve been, the people I’ve been with – can you imagine being asked to give a 45-minute motivational speech in Flims, Switzerland, to the top 115 executives of Motorola Corporation, and all of them, American – or, English – was their second language.”
“Those kinds of things are monumental in your life, but I didn’t think about ‘em at the time. I honestly, until I wrote about ‘em, I didn’t think about ‘em.”
“Eighty percent of kids all over the United States that are involved in a band program – marching band, concert band, whatever – 80 percent have never ever been involved in a gang or any sort of activity; in other words, their gang was the band room!”
“I had read TIME magazine that week and it showed that all 535 members of Congress, every one of them, had said they had had a musical experience during their school years… if it was so great for you, you’ve gotta fund it… Music and art is usually the first thing to go. If we take that away from our kids, if we take that away from our public, we’re going back in the jungle.”
“The art of telling a joke is completely out of today’s comedians that we see at the comedy clubs or that you see on television.”
“You have to love what you’re doing. You have to be devoted and dedicated to what you’re doing. And you have to have the mindset that you’re going to be able to sustain the type of energy and the type of desire that, you want to have at least a shot at doing what you would love to do for the rest of your life.”